Posted on 09/23/2015 2:54:03 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
As a visitor to the United States, Pope Francis faces a minor challenge: His English isn’t so great. Over the course of the trip, he’ll give 18 speeches, and only four of them will be in English; he’ll mostly use his native language, Spanish, to give homilies and addresses.
But at Wednesday’s mass in Washington, D.C., at which Francis will canonize Father Junipero Serra, he’ll add another linguistic twist. The main prayers of the service, along with the celebration of the Eucharist—the part of the service when people take communion—will be in Latin.
Latin! This is an exclamation-mark-worthy fact for a few reasons. “It’s very unusual,” said Father John O’Malley, the Georgetown University professor and author of What Happened at Vatican II. “It’s not unheard of, but it doesn’t make much sense, if you’re in an English parish, or a Spanish parish, to do it in Latin.”
[big snip]
...That’s why it’s so interesting that Francis has chosen to include Latin in his D.C. mass:... “He’s the first pope in 50 years not to have participated in the Council,” O’Malley said. “That’s good, because he’s not fighting the battles of the Council.”
The mass that will be celebrated in D.C. on Wednesday is not the pre-Vatican II mass. The service will include English, Spanish, and several other languages, according to a Vatican spokesperson, and the pope won’t be following the Tridentine liturgy....
More likely than not, the decision to use Latin in the mass is a matter of comfort: The pope isn’t very good at English and he’ll already be speaking a lot of Spanish, so the mass offers an opportunity to incorporate another language into this visit. But it’s a small reminder that no move the pope makes come without complicated history—and symbolism—attached.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
“You don’t understand the work of Christ.”
No, I do - probably much better than you ever will.
“He didn’t bring an intellectual understanding of god. He brought God himself.”
Which proves my point.
“He brought Grace and delivered the Holy Spirit. That changed man forever, but even the Spirit-led man had to exist in a world of paganism that required a strong, centralized political church.”
Except the Church wasn’t political. Even anti-Catholic wackos claim that Church WAS NOT POLITICAL for at least three centuries. Thus, you’re trapped by your own claim. If the Church was not political from its inception and for centuries afterward (how many depends on who you talk to, but all readily admit three centuries), then that means your thesis is logically impossible. Also, there was little centralization in the Church except on the most important of issues. Again, a mortal wound to your anti-historical thesis.
“Note that even that church split several times before the Reformation, so division was not an invention Luther.”
I didn’t say it was. The invention is yours. You’re inventing a history that did not exist. Stick to writing fiction. Leave Church History to those who actually know it.
I sing in an Anglican-Catholic choir and love singing in Latin.
Asperges Me
My wife never took a day of Latin in her life. Ever.
We go to Latin Mass every week. You give her a passage of Latin and she will get the basic jist of it.
People do learn things, you know.
>>Except the Church wasn’t political. Even anti-Catholic wackos claim that Church WAS NOT POLITICAL for at least three centuries. Thus, you’re trapped by your own claim.
That’s pure bunk. For those three centuries, it wasn’t the Roman Catholic Church. It was just the church. It became political after it became the Church of Rome. No one, including me, would say that it was political before it became the Church of Rome.
IIRC, Latin actually has few hard and fast rules as to the order of subject, object and predicate. For examples: "Omnia Gallia est in tres partes divisa" places those in the order of simply subject, predicate with no direct object It would have been equally correct for Julius Caesar to have written it as "In tres partes est omnia Gallia divisa." "Arma virumque cano" (I sing of arms and the man) is the more familiar Latin order of direct objects, predicate (implied subject "I" contained in the verb form cano). English is generally more rigid in this respect.
When I attended a Jesuit prep school back when we were busy inventing the wheel, we used a series of four textbooks and a separate grammar book by Robert Henle, S.J., an introduction to Latin prose (I), Caesar's war in Gaul (II), Cicero's orations (III), and Virgil (we actually translated the entire Aeneid rather than using the text in senior year) (IV) and Latin Grammar. These are all still in print from Loyola University Press in Chicago. If you have children or grandchildren to whom you would like to teach Latin, it is a great set of books which uses very good methods to teach Latin.
God bless you and yours!
Did you study Latin before praying the altar boy's opening prayer at Mass? Like most worthwhile things learning Latin or Greek or modern foreign languages does require some scholarship and effort.
For those unwilling or unable to learn a language other than their native language, there were missals, Latin page on the left, vernacular on the right, complete with drawings of what the priest is doing as the prayers flow by. Grammar school children handled that with ease and still do if they are fortunate enough to attend Tridentine (old Latin) Masses.
Dear BlackElk, I hope that whatever you are doing now is making good use of that wonderful brain of yours. It is awesome.
The Jesuits are one of my favorite subjects. Well, I exaggerate. What disturbs me about them is: They were once the crème de la crème of Catholic Intelligensia. I found in later years, that was bogus and they seem to have descended into some sort of maverick, rogue organization and that troubles me...but who am I? With a little research, though, I found that the founder, St Ignatius, was the original “who am I to judge.” Maybe I am wrong.
They certainly did a great job with you!
Paul said he would rather speak a few words that were understood than a lot no one knew
"Introibo ad altare Dei, ad Deum qui laetificat iuventutem meum ..." ... "I will go unto the altar of God, to God who gives joy to my youth".
You were reciting Scripture. It's Psalm 43, verse 4.
I trust from your earlier posts on this thread that you were brought up Catholic and even, as an altar boy, served the old Latin Mass in your youth. In those days, the priest said his parts of the Mass in Latin (usually reading the Gospel in the vernacular language and the altar boys, on behalf of the congregation gave the responses in Latin.
You indicated that you had not understood the meaning of the Latin responses you gave as an altar boy. That was likely the fault of the priest who taught you to serve Mass.
The charm of the Tridentine Mass is that its words and the presentation of the Mass are far more precise and respectful than are those of today's Novus Ordo Mass. I join with many other Traditional Catholics in thinking Novus Ordo poorly worded, purposely mistranslating Scripture and placing tons of ambiguity where once our Catholic liturgy was verrrry precise.
Traditional Mass music is the work of Mozart, Palestrina and other magnificent master composers of previous centuries. The effect is that we have a foretaste of heaven when we hear that music at Mass. This in spite of the fact that in my car or at home, I prefer Elvis, Beach Boys, Abba, Motown, folk, Buddy Holly and early Rockabilly, all of which and others give me joy and none of which belong at Mass.
Is your reference to Paul a reference to the author of many Scriptural Epistles (to Romans, Ephesians, Colossians, Corinthians, Thessalonians, to Timothy and others) whom Catholics reference as St. Paul, Evangelist and Martyr? If so, St. Paul was a profound and complex man, formerly a persecutor of Christians for the Sanhedrin who martyred his own cousin St. Stephen for becoming a Christian. You can read St. Paul as advising against marriage (and therefore against sexual relations between man and woman) while noting that "it is better to marry than to burn." If all early Christians had avoided celibacy, i would have been MUCH harder to recruit and retain Christians from a pagan world with much looser standards. See the more recent religion called Shakers who went nearly extinct through the total avoidance of sex in marriage.
For Traditional Catholics in our time, the significance of the old Latin (Tridentine, i.e codified by Pope St. Pius V after the 16th century Council of Trent or Counter-Reformation Council) Mass is that it is a product of serious scholarly research on the liturgy which by the time of Luther, had as many as 600 (?) differing Mass rubrics which was deemed to encourage confusion. Pope St. Pius V was a Dominican and he banned almost all preceding rites but allowed the Dominicans to retain their Ambrosian Rite. The pre-existing rites of specific Catholic Church divisions based on nationality or tradition were allowed to continue IIRC.
There is a Catholic Church whose history traces back to Syria when Peter was at Damascus. NYer who posts many Catholic stories here joined that quite traditional rite in the Albany, NY diocese. I believe that their Masses are traditional Tridentine era Masses said in Aramaic which is the language of Jesus Christ but seldom spoken today. It is the language used in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ (with English subtitles).
Although Latin is traditionally the language of the Roman Catholic Church as once it was for the secular world rulers of the Roman Republic and then the Roman Empire. It has long been a language of diplomats and scholars. It was traditional to defend one's doctoral thesis orally in Latin.
While people are today not as familiar with Latin as they were not so long ago. Many non-Catholic alumni of public schools studied Latin if they were on a college track especially for the vocabulary and the wondrous discipline of mind that grows from an inflected language: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs are declined or conjugated by differing endings for each gender, case, and number and declension (1 to 5) of nouns and pronouns and adjectives, tenses, number, mood, conjugations (1 to 4) and other qualities of verbs.
While it is a substantial job building an understanding of all those endings and what they indicate about those words make it possible to very precisely translate Latin into English or any other modern language. Such languages as English, Spanish, German, French and most modern languages are much simpler. If you have mastered Latin, they become easy to learn.
If I am wrong on any of the foregoing (other than theology on which I won't change and neither will critics who are also entitled to their different beliefs), I welcome correction.
God bless you and yours.
God bless you and yours!
The Jebbies are still intellectuals of high order (three doctorates necessary to ordination unless they have changed the rules. The problem is that since Pedro Arrupe was elected Superior General in the mid-60's and served until removed by St. John Paul II, the Jebbies are not very Catholic. I had hope for Pope Francis because he is of the pre-Arrupe generation but he has dashed those hopes substantially. We should all pray for him nonetheless. His papacy, as he has stated, will not be a long one. I am going to stop making cracks against him in the vein that God knows how to fire him.
Thank you for your kind words!
What I do now is write on the internet and particularly on FR, root long distance for my New York Yankees and finally got back to the Tridentine Mass in Rockford just this last Sunday. Pray for me as I pray for others. Without prayers of others, I would be dead. God is wonderful and can heal anything although I expect that I will be on dialysis for the rest of my life. God bless!
Thank you, Black Elk. You uncovered a little about the Jesuits I didn’t know, and I don’t know much.
After the pope’s visit, I hold even less hope for the renewal, restoration and acceptance of the Tridentine Mass into the scheme of things, here in the US.
I appreciate your comment about restraining your critiques on this pope, with the understanding of a short papacy, and God’s own designs. That is exactly how I believe, although I fail miserably at the criticism level. October will tell the story of our future, at the Family Synod in Rome, don’t you agree. I do realize a synod does not carry the weight of a Council, but nevertheless, the nefarious are at play and out in the open. I am especially praying for the African cardinals to spare us from a bad outcome.
Best to you, and peace dear friend to so many. Rita.
False: false witness, false gospel, false prophet, false apostle
Luther did publish a blueprint for the Holocaust, which the Germans adopted from their elder statesman and implemented, murdering six million Jews.
* * * But what will happen even if we do burn down the Jews' synagogues and forbid them publicly to praise God, to pray, to teach, to utter God's name? They will still keep doing it in secret. If we know that they are doing this in secret, it is the same as if they were doing it publicly. for our knowledge of their secret doings and our toleration of them implies that they are not secret after all and thus our conscience is encumbered with it before God.
* * *
Accordingly, it must and dare not be considered a trifling matter but a most serious one to seek counsel against this and to save our souls from the Jews, that is, from the devil and from eternal death. My advice, as I said earlier, is:
First, that their synagogues be burned down, and that all who are able toss in sulphur and pitch; it would be good if someone could also throw in some hellfire. That would demonstrate to God our serious resolve and be evidence to all the world that it was in ignorance that we tolerated such houses, in which the Jews have reviled God, our dear Creator and Father, and his Son most shamefully up till now but that we have now given them their due reward.
* * *
I wish and I ask that our rulers who have Jewish subjects exercise a sharp mercy toward these wretched people, as suggested above, to see whether this might not help (though it is doubtful). They must act like a good physician who, when gangrene has set in, proceeds without mercy to cut, saw, and burn flesh, veins, bone, and marrow. Such a procedure must also be followed in this instance. Burn down their synagogues, forbid all that I enumerated earlier, force them to work, and deal harshly with them, as Moses did in the wilderness, slaying three thousand lest the whole people perish. They surely do not know what they are doing; moreover, as people possessed, they do not wish to know it, hear it, or learn it. There it would be wrong to be merciful and confirm them in their conduct. If this does not help we must drive them out like mad dogs, so that we do not become partakers of their abominable blasphemy and all their other vices and thus merit God's wrath and be damned with them. I have done my duty. Now let everyone see to his. I am exonerated. "
Dear Black Elk, Sorry it took me so long to reply. I usually go to bed at midnight and you were a busy bee long after that.
To address my conclusion regarding Ignatius, I did some research and came away with 18 Rules of the Jesuits contained in Spiritual Exercises authored by him. The First rule is: All judgement laid aside. Now this could mean many things, but we can see that in the hands of less than holy people, it could open an enormous field of “Who are we to judge?”
The tenth rule is: find good and praise. There again, there is opportunity for mischief.
I don’t think Ignatius foresaw the dangers of those words, nevertheless, there they are for those to pick and choose.
I so appreciate your lengthy and complete explanations and again compliment the Jesuits, who may not aspire to endorse evil, but the danger was and is there, but gave you an excellent education.
God Bless you and yours, also!
“That’s pure bunk.”
No, what you’re saying is pure bunk - the pure bunk of the historically ignorant.
“For those three centuries, it wasn’t the Roman Catholic Church.”
It’s always been the Catholic Church.
“It was just the church.”
The “church” was the Catholic Church.
“It became political after it became the Church of Rome.”
Again, you’re contradicting yourself. It was ALWAYS the Church of Rome for the Church in Rome. Thus. even in the first century THE CHURCH was led by the Church of Rome.
“No one, including me, would say that it was political before it became the Church of Rome.”
No rational or educated person would say that “it was political [when] it became the Church of Rome.” Read a book. Get a clue.
>>“That’s pure bunk.”
>>No, what you’re saying is pure bunk - the pure bunk of the historically ignorant.
>>“For those three centuries, it wasn’t the Roman Catholic Church.”
>>It’s always been the Catholic Church.
>>“It was just the church.”
>>The “church” was the Catholic Church.
>>“It became political after it became the Church of Rome.”
>>Again, you’re contradicting yourself. It was ALWAYS the Church of Rome for the Church in Rome. Thus. even in the first century THE CHURCH was led by the Church of Rome.
>>“No one, including me, would say that it was political before it became the Church of Rome.”
>>No rational or educated person would say that “it was political [when] it became the Church of Rome.” Read a book. Get a clue.
Your level of ignorance is quite incredible, considering you went to the trouble to tell me that I was wrong and you are in fact wrong every single point.
Christ’s body (aka the Church) was founded by Jesus and became the Church in Acts 2. Shortly thereafter, the church spread to Rome, along with many other places. (Hint: all those letters called the Epistles were written to churches)
The Roman Church rose to the top after it became the state church of Rome in the 4th century and gained the power to crush anyone who dared to say that the seat of power in the church was Jesus and not the Pontifex Maximus in Rome.
You really should take the time to study the history of Chrsistianity—all of it and not just the Roman sect and the Protestants that were spawned by it. There is a rich history of the church in the East that you pretend never even happened.
“Your level of ignorance is quite incredible, considering you went to the trouble to tell me that I was wrong and you are in fact wrong every single point.”
I wasn’t wrong on a single point. You’re proving that by failing to even remotely showing how I am wrong. You’ll continue in that vein.
“Christ’s body (aka the Church) was founded by Jesus and became the Church in Acts 2.”
First of all, if it WAS the Church then it didn’t become the Church because it already WAS the Church. The Church was revealed. It always was what it was.
“Shortly thereafter, the church spread to Rome, along with many other places. (Hint: all those letters called the Epistles were written to churches)”
And?
“The Roman Church rose to the top after it became the state church of Rome in the 4th century...”
No. The Church of Rome is the Roman Church. There was no “becoming”. It was what it was. You seem to have this fantasy about the Church “becoming”. It always was what it always was. Also, the Church of Rome did not become anything in the 4th century that it wasn’t in the first century. If it did “become” something that it had not been before then it would have been noted by someone somewhere for some reason. No such thing happened. Also, anyone who was putting forward a theory like yours - if it were true - would be able to name an exact pontificate and an exact year when this supposed “becoming” happened. So which year is it?
“...and gained the power to crush anyone who dared to say that the seat of power in the church was Jesus and not the Pontifex Maximus in Rome.”
See, this is where the ignorance of the anti-Catholic becomes apparent. 1) Anyone who actually know the history of the Church knows the Church of Rome didn’t have the power to “crush” anyone in the 4th century. Secondly, the pope did not possess the title of pontifex maximus in the 4th century. Thus, your theory is shown to be completely wrong. Of course. It was inevitable.
“You really should take the time to study the history of Chrsistianity—”
That was my focus in graduate school. Go on. Keep floundering.
“...all of it and not just the Roman sect and the Protestants that were spawned by it.”
I did that too. You can’t get anything right now can’t you? I studied the Church, I studied Eastern Orthodoxy too, and Protestantism in all its manifestations, and Protestant spawned quasi Christian groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons.
“There is a rich history of the church in the East that you pretend never even happened.”
No, I never “pretend”. I know a great deal about the history of the Church in the East - and have even taught some Eastern Orthodox here about it (some didn’t know about how the Russians used forcible conversions in Siberia for instance and I had to relieve them of their ignorance about the history of their own churches).
Been there. Done that. And you apparently have a lot to learn.
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